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This is a great way to work on gait, cognition, balance, ADL’s…all of it. Take pictures of different locations in the building you are in. The patients have to locate where they were taken. You can also take pictures of people who work there and have the patients find them. It’s a great way for them to learn the building AND figure out who everyone is.

If you’ve been a therapist for longer than 5 minutes, you may have noticed the therapy world is in a constant state of change. Our patients have gotten more medically complex, they live well into their 90’s, and they frequent our clinics and rehabs on more than one occasion. We have made great progress over the past 20-30 years. Years ago, our “gyms” were in the basement next to the laundry and maintenance department. There were periods of my life in the winter where I caught the last glimpse of the sun on my way home from work. We’ve come a long way since then, many of us graduating to being on the same floor as the populations we serve.

Some of us have the privilege to work in settings filled with big, beautiful rehab departments furnished with ADL suites, Nu Steps, elevating mats, racks of new weights, an unlimited supply of towels, and wheelchairs that have matching leg rests. Others are trying to get by on a mat with wooden legs, 5 cones, a wooden cane, a microwave, hospital tray, non-matching weights, and 2 strips of Theraband. And no, there is no bathroom or sink…you have to bring them back to their room should they need to use the facilities.

Others travel through rain, sleet, and snow to deliver services to their patients, enduring untamed animals, “helpful” family members, offerings of mystery food, and creative sleeping/living arrangements special only to the home care therapists.

Whatever your setting, raise your Therabands high in the air and congratulate yourself for a job well done, a job that no mere mortal could endure. I raise my 2# dumbbell high and acknowledge those who take on finding ways to bring excellence to therapy AND have fabulous documentation supporting their amazing functional outcomes.

For all of the other therapists? Well….here’s the website to support the rest of us! Bored? Repeating the same thing over and over? Crappy documentation? Finally! A website to breathe some life back into our treatments and documentation that has gotten stale. This website is created by therapists, for therapists to continue making the difference we want to make.

What if there was a website dedicated to bringing fun, function, and some damn good documentation? What if we could pass along to each other all of our pearls of wisdom? Our bags of tricks? What if we finally had a place to find out EXACTLY what makes a good evaluation? An awesome note? And how could we stop getting denied for all of our hard work? My mission over the next months/years/decades is to pass along all that I know from being a therapist, a trainer, an auditor, a manager, and advocate of the aging.